Book Review: 26 Marathons: What I Learned About Faith, Identity, Running, and Life from My Marathon Career by Meb Keflezighi

I had planned on reading another book first but after listening to this podcast from LetsRun.com where they talked to Meb Keflezighi (interview starts at 51:28) I decided to read his new book first and glad I did.  So here is a short review and I hope it is enough to get you to want to read it.

If you read Meb's first book, Meb for Mortals, you learned much about what Meb did to be, and stay, a successful runner.  While getting some insights into his life from his first book most of the info was more directly running related.  In Meb's new book 26 Marathons:What I Learned About Faith, Identity, Running, and Life from My Marathon Career he recounts the 26 marathons, yes his last marathon as a pro was his 26th, he ran.  While he indeed does recount the running specifics about each one, how things went and did not go, what is a greater takeaway from each chapter is what he learned about running and life from each.  These takeaways will be as beneficial to the recreational runner as it will be to the more competitive one.  We can all gain from learning the life lessons others glean from their races and there is much to learn from Meb's career

While I have followed Meb for his entire career as I have always admired how he ran, and where he came from, I really knew little of him other than how he got to the US and how a good, and versatile, a runner he was - that was about it.  One of the many things I have always liked about Meb is his desire to encourage other runners even while being a highly competitive runner - and you will see this in his book.  Often the career of a competitive athlete, especially that of the long distance runner, necessitates a level of self-centeredness but Meb genuinely seems to care for others and seeks to help them run and live better and this mindset flows through the book.

Meb reflects throughout the book how his philosophy of "run to win" is not limited to just getting first place but is seen in a more broader sense -  that of giving ones best.   By doing this, giving ones best, if one does not get first in a race, most do not, but runs their best they still win.  For some this may seem less than ideal for being competitive but as Meb shared, again, not every one will win any particular race but everyone can still learn something and in some manner win.  This is not the "Everyone get's a trophy" mentality that we often see but is more about how to have a healthy look at ones running - no matter how competitive one is.

26 Marathons starts with Meb's first marathon in New York with a 9th place finish in 2:12:35 and one that he initially wanted to be his last, thankfully it was not.  He moves though his other marathons and injuries including his 4 Olympic Trials Marathon Trials, making the team 3 times and his wins in New York in 2009 (Marathon #12) and Boston in 2014 (Marathon #19).  Not all the marathons went his way, or as he planned, but there was something to earn from each of them and we can learn from his lessons.  This also helps us to take a look at each race we do to see what can be learned from it and how it can be applied to running and life.

If you are not one to just sit down and read a book this book is the one for you.  It is set up well with each chapter being about one of the 26 marathons Meb ran with each chapter being only, at most, 10 pages long and flows very well.  Truth is you may find your self reading more than you thought as I did not want to put the book down as I wanted to learn about the next marathon and then the next.

Even if you do not run marathons, or run at all, I think this would be a valuable read as it will hopefully give you a great perspective on your running, riding or life in general.  I encourage you to get a copy and glean what you can from one of Americas best marathoners.

Other book reviews to check out:

• Run for Your Life - Mark Cucuzzella
• Fast After 50 - Joe Friel

Review of Fast After 50 by Joe Friel

While the title of this book, Fast After 50, may lead you to think it is only for us aging folk it’s
content is important for any athlete – but especially those that are getting older and still want to stay competitive.  Even if you are younger many of the topics will apply as many of the principles apply for all athletes but duration and and quantity may change as we age.  Also, I encourage most people’s training to have a longer range view than just the next workout but to look years down the road.  Sure there may be those with short term goals but for the majority of us, even those who are competitive, a longer range goal exists, or should – to be competitive for a long time.

With that in mind Joe Friel speaks to the aging athlete and, yes, primarily those who are competitive.  If you are not competitive you can take much away from this book.  However, those of us that seek to eke out the best from out bodies as we get older will benefit even more.  Let me stop here a moment and make sure you understand that “competitive” does not have to mean “winning” races but simply that you want the best out of yourself when you race and compete be it at the front, middle or back of the pack.  You may not win but you can still compete by putting out your best and having trained to do so. Thus, do not limit the idea of being competitive only to those at the front of the pack.

One other aspect of this book I want to touch on at the start is that while Joe has written mostly on riding in the past and the book has a cyclist on the front it is far from being about only riding as all athletes from many sports can benefit from this book.  Of course many times cycling is used as an example but other sports are mentioned and, again, you can take the principles and spread them across a full range of sports.

Fast after 50 is broken up into 2 parts:

• Part 1 – Older Slower Fatter
• The Aging Myth
• The Ageless Athlete
• Over the Hill
• Part 2 – Faster Stronger Leaner
• The High Performance Senior Athlete
• Training Basics
• Advanced Training
• Rest and Recovery
• Body Fat

Part 1 deals with the myths and truths of aging.  Joe does not sugar coat that yes we do slow as we age and our training will need to change.  But in doing so he asks the correct questions as to why this is so.  In this he shows that while there is a degree of loss that comes with aging what is often seen is loss due to a backing off in training and thus not all attributable to age itself. The idea being that while we will all slow down it is often our intentional, or unintentional, backing off, too much, in training that can exacerbate this loss.   So much of what will be put forth later in the book is to help the older athlete work to not back off too much, while being aware and still realizing they are not what they once were.  Personally this is something I have known for a long time but for those of us that have been at this for some time can be hard to get a grip on.  That is the understanding that we cannot train as we once did but this does not mean slowing down but changing what and how we do things.  The goal is to not simply just do less but be smarter with, and in, what we can do.

Joe makes things simply by breaking down endurance fitness into 3 categories:

• Aerobic Capacity
• Lactate Threshold
• Economy

Thus all workouts are be done to work on one or more of these three categories.  By breaking it down to these three the rest of the book then applies workouts to one of these areas and this makes things easier to keep straight.   Also, by breaking things down to these three areas it can make it easier for the athlete to see what area they may be weak in, or has been ignored, so that area can be worked on.

I will say that depending on how you look at training things may be confusing initially, especially if in the past your view of training was to simply go out and run or ride as you feel – or till exhausted.  Joe seeks to help the reader be able to work things out for themselves but in a intelligent and intentional way.  He also does a good job of repeating things through out the book to get ideas across.  But, even then you may need to read back over things if this is all new to you, but it will be well worth it.

Bottom line with Part 1 is that while getting older does affect the athlete it does not have to be as severe as we often see if we realize that often this change is not only from aging but is also often exacerbated by cutting back on training too much in fear of injury or from a misunderstanding of aging.  As will be seen in Part 2 over-doing it with training can also be a cause of issue as you age.

In Part 2 Joe begins to work on more specifics of training in covering training basics, looking at advanced training, delving into rest and recovery as well as looking at diet and body fat.  All of these are key to success of the aging athlete and ones that need to be looked at by anyone looking to remain a competitive athlete as they age.

Basically Part 2 takes the needs shown in Part 1 and begins to flesh out how to accomplish them and work them into your training plan - or make one if you have never done so.  In Part 2 you are provided the tools, in the form of differing workouts and concepts, that you can then take and put into a plan to improve training and thus your performance.  I did appreciate the continual reminder to make sure one gets enough rest between higher intensity workouts that are required of aging athlete to hinder the loss of performance.  Also, as listed in the topics covered, Joe deals with diet and while not putting forth a particular diet he does touch on the need to change ones diet as we get older to combat the natural tendency to gain fat.

Many of you may know I tend to train at what is known as MAF (Maximum Aerobic Function – as set forth my Phil Maffetone) which stresses training largely at a much lower HR than many of us do.  While Fast after 50 does not directly deal with MAF there is talk about aerobic training and once you read the book you will see how you can indeed use the books ideas in the context of MAF.  This is because MAF is not for everyday, except maybe in particular blocks of easy aerobic training,  so you can filter in much of what the author shares on those days when higher intensity training fits in.

That was just a quick overview of this book, a book I think every older athlete can gain much from whether you ride, run, swim or do some other activity – the principles apply.  Fast After 50 is a book you should add to your library.  Read it as often as needed and use the principles in laying out your training plan to increase your performance in what ever sport you partake in.

Review of Mark Cucuzzella's Book: Run For Your LIfe

I just finished reading Dr. Mark Cucuzzella’s new book Run for Your Life, well I finished it a few weeks ago but took some time to get this written up, and think it is a book that needs to be on every runner’s shelf.  No let me rephrase that; it needs to be wherever it needs to be to get read and re-read.  While I have not met Mark in person, hope to one day, I consider him a friend and was grateful when he offered me the book to review.  Truth is I had it on pre-order before he contacted me and was looking forward to reading it so being given this book in no way influenced the review that will follow.  By the way if you want to learn a little more about Mark you can read an interview I did with him.

Always hard, well for me it is, to review a book such as this that contains so much information, and great information at that.  The difficulty is in sharing enough information to let people get a feel for the book but not so much as to re-write the book.  Here is my attempt to give you a taste for this great book.  I am going to do is give a short overview of each section.

Before I do this a little bit about the format of this book.  The book is broken up into 3 sections that deal with Getting Started in Running, Running Itself & General Running Related Info.  Within each of these sections are a number of topics with one of the most useful aspects of this book being the activities at the end of each chapter.  Mark did not just simply supply information and leave it at that, as good as that would be, he also supplies what are called “Drills” which are exercises, things to do, that allow one to put each chapter into action.  Thus, what you have read is then able to move from just being information to being action and then hopefully move into being a habit.  Let me also add that there is a website that is free to access that contains many of the excises and drills you will read about in the book: Run For Your Life

Here is an overview of the book:

Part 1: Before the Starting Line
In this section Mark looks at who we are and how we are built to run.  While I do not hold to the same evolutionary position as Mark that does not change my agreement with the final conclusions that he shares. I simply see the body, and its many parts, as the grand design of God and thus is still a miracle to look at and to see how it all works together.

Mark does a great job of showing how all the parts in the body work together to enable us to move and most of all run.  We were not designed just to sit as most of us, me included, do but to move and be active. Mark also shows how not moving and being inactive as we so often are are affects, negatively, other aspects of out physiology.  Thus moving is critical to living a healthy and vibrant life.  In the last section of the book Mark will touch on this but so much of what we do today leads to inactivity and being indoors when we get the most out of life moving and being in outside.

This section of the book starts with helping us gain an understanding of the body as a system.  The importance of seeing things as a system, as a whole, is important as it allows us to see how interrelated all of our body parts and systems are involved in moving.  Often when talking about running people just want to jump right in with what they can do to get going.  Mark does that in the accompanying drills but the main crux of this first section of the book is to set the ground work as to how the body is supposed to function.  This builds a foundation for what is to follow so that when we work to move as we were designed to do we can do so as the body was intended.

Chapters in Part 1

• Out Bodies are older then we think
• Stand up and Breath
• Walk Before You Run
• The World is Flat If You’re a Foot
• The Springs That Move Us

Part 2: The Body in Motion
Part 2 builds on the initial information and drills provided in Part 1 so as to move to help us get the most out of our bodies, and not just for running.  What is really good about Run For Your Life is that Mark does not simply provide direction so as to run farther and faster.  He goes farther, which explains the title of the book, as he gives direction to live better and enjoy life more - not simply in the area of running.

Running farther and faster is great and I think you will be able to do so from all that is provided in this book and from the information in this chapter.  However, of more importance, and worth, is to be able to live better.  So often in life we speak of the length of life, and thus quantity, but when you look at the public who may be living longer the quality of life is not so glowing and thus they are not really “living.”

I appreciate that Mark did not avoid the often-controversial subject of nutrition and diet.  I use the word diet here not to speak of a particular way to eat but to relate to how we are to eat as a lifestyle and practice. Mark deals with not just how to eat to run faster but speaks to how one can eat to live better.  Again, the idea behind his book is for the reader to live better through a fuller understanding of ones body and how it works and what to do to have them work as designed.

Various areas are covered, as you will see below, in this section with all subjects - from form to rest - being important for one's running and life.  The order of the chapters also work together in a logical order as it starts with style/form and ends with avoiding injuries.  With all the aspects building on each other to work towards a more efficient system that in the end will allow one to indeed avoid the injuries that plague most runners.

Thus, Part 2 is where the rubber meets the road and where you put into practice the principles of Part 1

Chapters in Part 2

• The Elements of Style
• The Engine That Runs US: Build Endurance
• Move More and “Exercise” Less
• Eating to Got the Distance: Nutrition and Health
• What’s for Dinner: Setting Your Meal Course
• Recovery is Training
• Running a Marathon
• The Runner’s High: The Mind of a Winner
• Outsmart Injuries with Prevention

Part 3: Running is For Everyone
In this last section Mark deals with a variety of subjects such as women, aging, our connection with the outdoors and seeing the importance of our communities.  This part of the book in covering these various topics wraps up all that has gone before it so as to conclude the book covering areas often left out or kept for books of their own.  One area I did appreciate was his focus in the last chapter on communities.

We live in a world were we are all interconnected and in a more and more narcissistic and self absorbed individualistic world this is good to be reminded of.  Also, since running can be, and often does become, a very individual endeavor the idea of community is a good reminder.  When Mark speaks of working in the community he knows what he speaks of as he has done much in his community to change minds and the health of those around him.  Again, running can, and often is, a sport that leads one to be self absorbed so we need to be reminded that this is not to be and instead see how though running communities can be changed.

Chapters in Part 3

• Women are Pulling Away from the Pack
• Young at Heart
• Healthy at Any Age
• The Nature Cure
• Running in Place: The health of our Communities

Appendix
In the appendix Mark provides even more information including a plan for using the drills previously given by breaking them down into four groups: 1) Mobility/Stability, 2) Awakening Your Springs, 3) Strengthening Your Springs & 4) Extras.  These drills are provided in a format that makes them easier to use plan for using them so as to work on your some training plans.  Mark also provides training plans for running a 5k, 1/2 Marathon or Marathon using much of what has been discussed in the book thus further putting into action all that has been discussed

I hope this brief review of Mark's book was helpful and if you have not already order a copy you will do so.  As you can tell I highly recommend reading Run For Your Life, and probably more than once as I need to do.  If you know anyone just starting out running or looking to do so give this book to them as a gift and as a starting point for their journey.  Hey, give it as a gift to yourself – you will be glad you did.

Check out these resources:

• Run For Your Life Website 
• Natural Running Center 
• USAF NRC Efficient Running Training Modules